Setlist from last night (20 November)

Last night's show included a birthday tribute to the President-elect.

"Dog Eat Dog" - Adam & the Ants
"Red Light Indicates Doors Are Secured" - Arctic Monkeys
"Nite on the Tiles" - Mud (for drummer Ray Stiles' birthday)
"I Can Play That Rock 'n' Roll" - Joe Walsh (for Joe's birthday)

"Elected" - Alice Cooper
"The President" - Robyn Hitchcock & the Egyptians
"Winner Takes It All" - Sammy Hagar
"Congratulations Song" - Corrosion of Conformity

"Open My Eyes" - Nazz
"Probably All in the Mind" - Oasis
"What She's Done to Your Mind" - Rain Parade (by request)
"My Love Explodes" - The Dukes of Stratosphear (by request)

"Hidden Knives" - AFI (for singer Davey Havok's birthday)
"Never Let Me Down" - The Auto-No
"Too Many Rats" - Chuck Snow
"Seeds" - Figdish

"Legal Tender" - Pabst
"Under Pressure" [live] - David Bowie with Gail Ann Dorsey (for Gail's birthday)
"Love Spreads" - The Stone Roses (by request)

"Cut It Loose" - Maxband
"Mantra" - Bring Me the Horizon (for singer Oliver Sykes' birthday)
"Find Me" - Kings of Leon (for guitarist Jared Followill's birthday)
"Forgotten Years" - Midnight Oil (R.I.P. bassist Bones Hillman)

"Sabotage" - Beastie Boys (for Mike Diamond's birthday)
"The House Is Rockin' with Domestic Problems" - Cheap Trick
"Why Am I Your Only Friend?" - The Badgers

"Tryin' Anyway" - Mahogany Rush (for Frank Marino's birthday)
"Antidote to Being Bored" - Oscar Lang
"Sleep That Burns" - Be Bop Deluxe
"Glad to Be Alive" - Cowboy Mouth

That was non-stop awesome! And thank you for the Be Bop Deluxe. Always good to hear Bill Nelson...

You're quite welcome, 801. Always glad to include Bill and/or Be Bop Deluxe in my setlist.

"Sleep That Burns" is the first Be Bop Deluxe song I ever heard...and that was around 1994, well after the group's demise. A friend had it on a mixtape he made and I heard it in his car on the way to the record store one Saturday afternoon. Been a big fan of Bill Nelson ever since.

Another great show. I'm glad you played the outro to the Dukes of Stratosphear song, as it's an all-time classic.

Question: Who on this board got to hear Be Bop Deluxe while they still were an active band? [Delvin keeps his hands down.]

My oldest brother had Be Bop albums when they were current, so they were in my house but I'd be lying if I said I can remember ever listening to them myself - though being a sci-fi nerd, I definitely remember being intrigued by his copy of Live in the Air Age, due to Maria the robot's presence on the cover.

The first Bill Nelson I know for sure I heard was the 12-inch of "Living in My Limousine" / "White Sound," which I picked up based on Jim Green raving about it in Green Circles ( I guess that would've been 1981 or so). That made me a loyal Nelson fan for the first half of the 80s until he entered his "every random noise I might make shall be released as a deluxe box set" phase, at which time I threw up the white flag pretty quickly. I'm sure he's recorded plenty of stuff in the last 35 years or so that I would love, but there are only so many oysters I'm willing to shuck in search of a pearl. (See also Pollard, Robert).

... that’s exactly the way I discovered Nelson also, through the Green Circles review! And the positive mention in the ‘synth pop primer’ issue (TP80, of course).

I worked through the BeBop Deluxe catalog afterword, thanks to the used vinyl bins.

I heard Bill Nelson first on KRCC in Colorado Springs (and through a commercial station there as well, KIIQ-FM; they tried a "modern rock" format for a year or so). "Flaming Desire" was the first song I heard. I bought the Vistamix LP, and then back-tracked my way to The Love That Whirls and Quit Dreaming and Get on the Beam.

All during this time, during my record-shopping jaunts, I kept running across an album in the racks that kept drawing my attention in an odd, unexplainable way. The four guys on the cover were looking out of the photograph at me, as if they were saying, "You might as well buy this one. You know you're going to, sooner or later."

Some time in 1985, I was thumbing through the second edition of the TP Record Guide and ran across the entry on Bill Nelson. That's when I realized who one of those four smug-looking guys on that album cover was. I went to the store that week and finally bought The Best of and the Rest of Be Bop Deluxe. It entered into heavy rotation on my stereo very quickly. I was kicking myself for not heeding those four guys on the cover sooner.

Not that anybody asked, but since I like doing these things (especially with bands with minimal recording output), here is my ranking of the BBD albums, best to worst:

1. Sunburst Finish
2. Futurama
3. Modern Music
4. Drastic Plastic
5. Axe Victim